Wire twisting machines are well known, being used in the manufacture of multi-strand cables of both insulated and uninsulated wires. Such machines are used, both in taking up cable on to a reel, and in paying out strands from a reel. Simultaneously, while feeding the cable or strand elements to or from the reel, a twist is imparted by guiding the cable or strand elements by way of an orbiting guide member moving in encircling relation about the reel.
Certain aspects of the prior art reeling systems are found in the following listed references:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,079,580, Mar. 1978, Varga (1) PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,130,985, Dec. 1978, Varga (2) PA1 U.S. Pat. No. 4,423,588, Jan. 1984, Garcia PA1 WIRE JOURNAL INTERNATIONAL, Sept. 1986 "New Capacities of Double Twist Machines", by Marcel Bonnabaud, pages 118-139.
In prior art machines the handling of loaded reels, weighing as much as 5000 kilograms or more has presented significant problems, in the safe transfer thereof. In top loading machines such as VARGA (2) a crane is required to transfer the reel vertically into or from the interior of the machine. Generally in side loading machines, the reel rotational axis is coincident with the axis of spin of the orbital guide members, and the reel requires transfer bodily sideways for mounting into the pintles of the machine and removal therefrom. Such reel handling is time consuming, potentially dangerous, entails the provision of high cost, external ancilliary machines, and readily leads to damaging of the reel flanges. Furthermore, the provision of side flanges for the reel is not predicted on their requirement for lifting purposes.